This place is B.E.A.utiful.

I went out for the first time in here in Montpellier on Thursday and met up with about 8 of the girls in my program at a bar in La Place de la Comedie, which is the center square of the city.  The bar was pretty small and there were far too many people inside for one to find a seat or even a decent place to stand and drink.  But the atmosphere was pretty cool as it was a lot of young people and other study abroad students as well.  When I first got inside I went up to the bar all prepared to order my first drink, in french of course, but before I could even get a syllable out the bar tender asks me, "What do you want?", in plain english!  Do I evoke such an American image that people can tell that I am a foreigner before I even speak?  And even If I do, couldn't the bar tender have just humored me and let me order my drink in the language of the culture that I am part of for the moment?  But moving on, the drinks were very good that night as I had a Lynchberg Lemonade...never heard of it before that night, but I will be having those again soon and you should as well...trust me.  My girls and I(You like how I call them "my girls" ehh?) then proceeded on to a second bar/dance club that was pretty empty when we arrived but began to fill up as the night went on.  It is open until 5am so people don't start coming in until around 2 or 3 in the morning!  This is something the US clubs should look into and stop closing down at the childish hour of 2am.  Anyways, the night started and ended well...this and studying will be a regular habit of mine while I am abroad!  Friday late morning I went on a tour of Montpellier that lasted entirely too long considering the weather...it was raining and uncomfortably cold.  But we got to climb to the top of the arch that you saw in one of my earlier posts which was pretty cool!  The new gym I found is very nice, it has a big weight room, 2 pools(one being Olympic sized), and a court for basketball and other sports below...although I am still trying to find out the daily hours of the basketball court and how to get down to it.  An interesting aspect of this gym, and I do not know if this is common throughout France, but both men and women have the same communal showering area!  This caught me off guard as I was coming out of the shower one day and this older lady is walking into the shower next to me after one of her workouts.  Early Saturday morning our group started off on a tour of Provence that started at 830am and lasted until 630pm that evening.  We visited the Pont du Gard(A famous Roman aqueduct), the town of Fontaine du Vaucluse, Les Baux de Provence which is a town surrounding a 2nd century castle, the Windmill's of Fontveille.  I will post pictures with more explanations in a post follwowing this one so I wont go into detail about them now.  But I will say that it was an amazing trip which included sights that I will remember forever!  France continues to amaze me with its historical past and scenery that I never knew existed until now.  Check out the pictures in the next blog so you can see what words cannot describe...